Too Close To Reality

The collection of Black Mirror episodes that we have watched throughout the semester have truly allowed me to view today’s modern social media platforms in a different light. The episode Fifteen Million Merits has truly resonated with me for a multitude of reasons. If you’ve read my previous blog post, you noticed that paying attention to the number of likes and traffic that goes through my social media pages was far too important to me and started messing with my mental health. The episode, that portrayed many players playing a multitude of games to gain ‘coins’ in order to buy their way to fame, in my opinion, was far too relatable to our current social media obsessed society. Characters in the episode were too obsessed with the idea of fame that their lives revolved around it. They sacrificed their freedom and life in order to play games and live by the rules of superior authority. Facebook, Instagram and the other multiple social media platforms have an authoritative figure over today’s society, similar to the Black Mirror episode, treating their users as their servants. We have become brainwashed to the point where we don’t even realize these faults of ours. On top of it all, the episodes incorporates an even more sickening concept of today’s social media users losing sight of real human emotions and contact. The main character, who simply was truly in love with another character who he lost to the idea of fame, seemed to be the only individual who experienced true human emotions. All the other members of the game in the episode seemed emotionless and had their mind set on fame and doing whatever was needed to sell themselves for fame. Social media today has given us the opportunity to cover up our true emotions and portray emotions that we want our viewers and followers to believe. These actions result in social media users to focus on creating images of themselves that are simply unrealistic and not true. Despite this dark side of social media, I am confident that change is possible. I believe that movements towards transparency and more realistic social media posts have begun to arise. For one, we have seen the social media campaign put on by Bell called ‘Bell, let’s talk’ which aims at breaking down the negative stigma attached to mental health. The more transparency we provide with every post, the more users feel the need to be true and authentic through their social media presence. Stars like Alicia Keys have begun promoting genuine beauty ideals attached to woman by deciding to go through a make-up free phase. Celebrities who have a stronger platform must incorporate transparency and authenticity to allow users to share their true and real emotions. Furthermore, as I have spoken about in previous blog posts, gaining awareness over one’s self-awareness is crucial amongst social media users. We must promote users to focus on their mental state in order for them to have a better social media experience. By encouraging strong mental health amongst all social media users, certain posts that may trigger anxiety can help users to control their anxieties. Although the Black Mirror episode showed a lot of signs of today’s social media obsessed culture, I believe that raw human emotions are too powerful to let social media platforms control us.